antics of usual suspects on SC's observation on forced conversion

jan 23rd, 2011

if there is anything that's remotely anti-hindu, you can get messrs. john dayal, anand patwardhan, ram puniyani, harsh mander, praful bidwai and mesdames seema mustafa and  shabnam hashmi to sign it. not a problem.

i do like radha's point about the time it took the 'chindu' to retract. it must have taken a few threatening calls from various lawyers.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Radha Rajan
Date: Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 10:46 PM
Subject: Retraction from The Hindu - gets curiouser and curiouser
To:

I have been informed that The Hindu has retracted the news report which said that my dearly well-known beloveds and a bunch of editors had signed a statement calling for the SC to excise portions of the judgement which offended their 'secular heart' and except for ram puniyani and the J krishnamurti ites anand patwardhan and praful bidwai - bless my soul if the rest arent christian secular and muslim secular.

Now the retraction reads as follows -

http://www.thehindu.com/news/article1118655.ece?homepage=true

The statement reported in the news item published in 'The Hindu' of
January 23, 2011 titled "Expunge remarks against Graham Staines:
Supreme Court's remarks 'gratuitous,' say editors, civil society
members" was actually signed by Anand Patwardhan, Fr. Dominic Emanuel,
Harsh Mander, John Dayal, Navaid Hamid, H.L. Hardenia, Praful Bidwai,
Ram Puniyani, Shabnam Hashmi, Shahid Siddiqui, and Seema Mustafa.

It was wrongly stated in the report by our Special Correspondent that
the statement was signed by N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu,
Chandan Mitra, Editor-in-Chief of The Pioneer, and editorial
representatives from The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Indian
Express, The Hindu, The Pioneer, and The Telegraph.

We apologise for the serious blunder by our Special Correspondent, who
inexplicably mistook the persons to whom the statement was emailed for
publication, for the list of signatories.

Editor-in-Chief

Now this retraction is signed by the editor-in-chief of The Hindu, not one of my dearly beloveds in civil society. And read the underlined portion carefully me dearies and ask yourself why should The Hindu take upon itself to send this statement to the editors of these papers and not the civil society signatories themselves.

I will tomorrow draft a statement to the effect this civil society is blathering, get 100 people to sign it with me, hand it over to N Ram and dear me, N Ram will email my statement to all editors of all these papers? 

Sounds plausible?

Now for the best part - after I read the statement i sent a query to a good friend asking him when was this retraction posted on the Hindu website and look at his reply -

Radha-ji: You can "right-click" the website page and one of the options it shows up is "View Source". If you click on that, the time reveals 1655 IST.

Updated: January 23, 2011 at 16:55 IST

Now this was no silly or small mistake by their special correspondent. The report actually said that these editors had actually called for excising portions of a SC judgment. When they all woke up and read the paper with their morning coffee at 6AM or if those who read it called them up and asked them what in hell they had signed, I would expect that this grievous 'silly mistake' would have been corrected before 7 AM or if you dont have 14 dogs at home and the sun rises at 9 in your home, you would have corrected it by 9.30 AM.

To correct it at 5PM tells me that they brazened it out for the better part of the day and probably after a series of outraged calls perhaps from leading lawyers and senior advocates in the SC and perhaps from half a dozen retired judges of the SC, they retracted the statement and made their special correspondent the bali ka bakra. Poor goat. RR